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About This Episode

Astro Mike Massimino puts on his old CAPCOM headset and takes us inside Johnson Space Center, with a little help from his friends and guests, NASA Flight Directors Emily Nelson and Royce Renfrew, and his co-host Maeve Higgins. Discover just what it takes to keep expedition crews and vehicles safe during operations, from the mundane aspects of creating daily schedules that keep astronauts as productive – and happy – as possible, to the emergency procedures that can prevent disaster, as they did when water in astronaut Tim Kopra’s helmet led mission control to terminate an EVA. Explore the dangers that long-term missions pose for the health of astronauts, and the activities used on the ISS to fight bone loss and muscle atrophy in zero-g and to speed recovery time back here on Earth. Emily, who directed the last leg of Scott Kelly’s “Year in Space,” shares the inside story on two of the most infamous pranks ever pulled off in low-earth orbit: Kelly’s gorilla suit antics and the time astronauts Sunita Williams and Michael Lopez-Alegria nearly gave Flight Director Ginger Kerrick a heart attack. Plus, you’ll hear about an assortment of good luck rituals and superstitions, from “no fruit on consoles” and Royce’s ban on red clothes in the control room, to secret Space Shuttle pre-flight poker games that the mission commander had to win, to the Kennedy Space Center Launch Team’s “good luck beans.”